Precious, Tiny and Shiny: Close range photogrammetry for artists and others

Close Range Photogrammetry is increasingly being used to create digital assets across a range of disciplines, and can provide 3D ‘scans’ and surface ‘textures’ to very high resolution. The techniques of capture and processing usually present challenges for objects that are very small, monochromatic, reflective or relatively lacking in features.

This ongoing visual arts project seeks to capture, re-examine and ultimately transform specific military and religious insignia as part of an investigation into their interrelated iconographies and histories. The materiality (highly reflective) and scale (very detailed embroidery) of these objects has required different approaches to achieving the accurate 3D models required.

This paper will present the apparatus, methods and devices that have been developed to help solve these problems. Together they offer affordable, reliable, and scalable solutions to the traditional challenges of ‘3D scanning’ for particular types of objects, and robust methods applicable to a wide range of situations. They also help reduce the investment (of capital cost, time and labour) required to achieve accurate digital models with high resolution textures, opening up creative possibilities further down the virtual or material ‘pipeline’.

• http://www.eva-london.org/eva-london-201...